Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit. (1 Thessalonians 5:16–19, ESV)

Gratitude is a lot like exercise. When you don’t run, it is hard to run. But when you start to run, the more you can run, and the easier it is to run. You start to run faster and farther.

When you don’t practice gratitude, it is hard to be grateful. But when you start to appreciate your blessings, the more you will see blessings, and the easier it will be to express gratitude for those blessings. Not only will your gratitude be triggered more easily, but the depth of your gratitude will grow.

As we celebrate Thanksgiving this week, I want to challenge you to exercise your gratitude muscle. Write down as many things as you can for which you are grateful. You might start with 20. You might start at 50. You might start with 100. The important thing is that you actually write them down. Put it on paper. Make a note on your phone. Type it into your computer. Record your thoughts in a voice memo.

Then let the list sit. After you have let the list sit for a day, take it out again. Review the list. Write down at least 10 more things that were not previously on the list. You might really stretch yourself and try to double your list.

Here is my bet. You will be able to come up with things on the second day that you were not able to come up with on the first day. The reason is that when you practice gratitude it will increase your awareness and sense of gratitude throughout the day. Stronger gratitude will help you see things you failed to notice when you had a weaker gratitude. Gratefulness begets gratefulness. Thankfulness increases thankfulness. Appreciation expands appreciation.

Are you up to the challenge? If not, how will you exercise gratitude in your life?

Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. (1 Thessalonians 5:18, ESV)

Thanksgiving comes around once a year. It is a time to gather together with family. We watch some football and eat a nice meal. While the day is supposed to be about giving thanks, the actual practice of giving thanks is often neglected.

The Apostle Paul says to give thanks in all circumstances. In other words, gratitude is something to be practiced every day. It is not something to be reserved for one day of the year at the end of November.

But instead of practicing gratitude, it is often much easier to count all the things that are not right in life. However, when we engage in an intentional discipline of giving thanks, good things begin to happen. Here is a list of some of the benefits of gratitude:

Gratitude creates joy

It is much better to count your blessings than it is to wallow in your shortcomings. When you practice gratitude, you realize that life is not as bad as it might seem. You begin to see that life may be better than you perceive. Satan wants to rob your life of joy and will work overtime to make you blind you to the blessings God has granted. Gratitude will help you see the good things.

Gratitude saves you money

Gratitude builds contentment. When you have contentment you will not feel the need to buy that latest and greatest gadget with money you don't have. The goal of advertising is to make you feel discontent with your life and convince you that buying the latest and greatest is the key to your happiness. But if you are already happy, you will realize you do not need it.

Gratitude creates hope

When you practice gratitude, you will see you have much more in your favor than you realize. You will start to recognize the gifts God has given you to make a difference which you have taken for granted. You will begin to see God’s ability to empower you for more. Too often people lack trust in God’s ability to prosper them. But gratitude will work to conquer the fear of failure.

Gratitude opens up opportunity

As gratitude opens your eyes to see the world in a new way, you will begin to new see opportunities. Opportunities present themselves to those who have the eyes to see them. It’s not that you don’t have opportunities. It is that you don’t have the eyes to see them. As we are more attentive to God's work in our lives, we will see things we did not see before.

Gratitude creates healthy relationships

We can easily take the people in our lives for granted. It might be our spouse, volunteers at church, or the waiter at the restaurant. We all enjoy being appreciated. We all relish when other people take notice of what we are doing. And other people will appreciate when you offer them gratitude. Expressing gratitude towards others can do amazing things in your relationships.

Who can you express gratitude toward today? To whom can you show appreciation? Write a note. Send a message. Tell them in person. Let them know your appreciation. It will be a blessing to them. It will be a blessing to you. It will be a blessing to your relationship. It will be a blessing to God.

There is a reason “things” comes last. We are certainly thankful for things – but people, opportunities, and experiences need to come first.

No matter how much or how little we have, there is nothing we have except what God gives. In life, we will find there will always be people who have more. There will always be people who have less. When it comes to finding contentment, we will never find true contentment in things.

It is often the people who have the most that are the least content. There is always the elusive “more” out there. Once you acquire more, there will still be more. If you have your heart set on more, you will never arrive.

There is also the adage of “be careful of what you wish for.” The more you have, the more responsibility you hold. God did not give you what you have simply for yourself. He gave you what he gave you to supply your needs and the needs of others. We will all one day give an accounting of how we used what God entrusted to us.

Americans will spend millions of dollars buying gifts for one another this Christmas. We will give our children toys that they will play with on Christmas Day and then barely touch again. Think about what you received for Christmas last year. Many of us can’t even remember. Why do we so lavishly spend on each other, giving things we don’t need? I often wonder if our gift giving during Christmas truly honors the Savior we celebrate on that day.

There is something I heard some time ago. It was the idea of living simply so that others can simply live. It is the idea of foregoing the luxuries that we don’t need to help supply the basic needs of others. It is choosing to drive a good reliable used car instead of buying the luxury Mercedes on credit. It is choosing to live in a house I can afford that fits my family rather that taking a mortgage that will force me to live paycheck to paycheck. It is realizing that even though that large screen HDTV on sale for Black Friday was a really good deal, the TV I have works perfectly fine. We then take the money we would have spent on ourselves and use it to be a blessing for others. It’s about making eternal investments. This is how Jesus says it:

Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. Matthew 6:19–21 (ESV)

One of the most significant things that I have been able to participate in the last few year is working in Haiti. Our church has taken on sponsoring more than 50 children at the Timoun se Espwa Demen Orphanage (translated Children are the hope of the future). When I first walked into this orphanage less than two years ago, they had nothing. There was no food. The children slept on the concrete floor of a two-room house. The orphanage wall was broken down from the 2010 earthquake. School was not even a consideration.

Since that time, we have sponsored these children by sending a regular financial support. We have also taken several mission trips to the orphanage. The children have a new lease on life. The children of the future indeed have hope!

These are precious children. Check out this video that was recently sent to us this Thanksgiving:

This Christmas we want to something special for these children, and I want to invite you to prayerfully consider participating. We would like to buy bicycles for these children. We realize that bicycles are not a need in a country filled with overwhelming needs. But we wanted to do for these children something we would do for our own children. With a modest goal of $1000 on Giving Tuesday, we can make this a Christmas to remember for these children.

The season of Advent is upon us, but I am a little reluctant to move on from Thanksgiving. Watching the videos of people on Black Friday, there are many who would do well to hold on to Thanksgiving a little bit longer. Gratitude is not something to reserve for one day of the year, but it is something to strive for every day.

I left off last week, before Thanksgiving, talking about the acronym P.O.E.T. It stands for:

Today I want to continue the discussion and talk about being grateful for experiences. There are different types of experiences for which to be grateful.

Joyful Experiences

Our family had a November to remember. We took a family vacation at the beginning of the month to Disney World in Florida. Then on Thanksgiving Day, my daughter and I ventured into New York City to watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Two bucket list experiences in one month!

The great thing about experiences is that no one can take them away from us. We will hold on to those memories for the rest of our lives. We all remember riding a bike for the first time, that first kiss, and the birth of a child. These are special moments. Let’s remember the Giver of Life who makes all these great experiences possible.

Learning Experiences

Not every experience in life is a joyful experience. There are painful and difficult experiences. These are what I would call learning experiences. These are experiences I would never want to go through again, but I am glad I did. We all have a few hard learned lessons. We all have a tendency to learn the hard way. You may not want to thank God for the experience itself, but give him thanks for the lesson learned.

Faith-building Experiences

Faith-building experiences are similar to learning experiences. We might even consider them to be a special class of learning experiences. These are the experiences where we learn to trust God. These are experiences that refine our faith.

In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. 1 Peter 1:6–7 (ESV)

It might be the loss of a job, the death of a loved one, or a difficult divorce. Faith is rarely built on the sunny days of life. It is most often forged in the most difficult experiences.

Again, we may not be grateful for the experience itself, but if we look closely enough, we will find opportunity to be grateful even in the most demanding moments in life. It might be that we are grateful for God’s help. It might be that we are grateful for him taking us by the hand to navigate a challenging circumstance. It might be discovering gratitude in realizing that there is a greater experience that awaits all who trust Jesus as Savior. I am grateful to know that when I am weighed down by the burdens of this world, that these burdens are only temporary.

Unique Experiences

Your experiences in life are unique to you. No one has all the same experiences as you. It is part of what makes you who you are. It is part of what enables you to serve your Lord in a way that no one else could serve him. Each of us has our individual contribution to make in the Kingdom of God. As you think about your experiences in life, consider the possibilities of how you can use your unique experiences in life to bless God and others.

These are four opportunities to express our gratitude. Yesterday I talked about being grateful for people. Today I want to continue the discussion and talk about being grateful for opportunities.

God has given you opportunities. More opportunities than you realize. We all have opportunities presented to us, but we fail to see them because we are too focused on missed opportunities of the past, present opportunities not available, or opportunities some distance away in the future. But there are opportunities before you if you are willing to see them.

Your future is a blank canvas. Today is a day of possibilities filled with opportunities. Ask God to give you the eyes to see opportunities and the courage to grab hold.

I enjoy the art of photography. The challenge of good photography is to look at everyday life from a new perspective. You can have two photos of the same subject. One may be forgettable and the other captures your attention and imagination. What makes the difference? One photographer saw the possibility. He saw the opportunity. He challenged himself to look at a common subject in a new way. Maybe he looked at the subject from an angle above. Maybe he looked at it from an angle below. Maybe he changed the lighting to see the subject in a new light.

The point is that it is the same subject, but a different outcome. The opportunity existed from both photos. One photographer saw the opportunity and the other did not. What are the opportunities you miss?

The other thing about capturing a photo is that you need to frame the subject. Often what makes a photo compelling is what you don’t see. A great photo is not about embracing all the possibilities, but seizing the right possibilities. The photographer is limited by the frame of the camera. He is limited by the lighting of the scene. He is limited by the technology. But great art is to capture possibility inside of all the limitations.

There are plenty of things I never got to do with my life. There are plenty of things I will never get to do. There are plenty of limitations in front of me. But instead of dwelling on what I didn’t do and what I can’t do, I will choose to focus on what I can do. And there is an abundant future that is full of possibility with God as my strength!

I am thankful for the opportunity to live. I am thankful for the opportunity to celebrate Thanksgiving with my family. I am thankful for the opportunity to partner with God in doing his work. I am thankful for the opportunity to connect with you through this blog. I am thankful for the opportunity to make a living doing what I love. I am thankful for the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of others. I am grateful for opportunities I don’t yet see.